CAS Workshop. From Schism to Union and Back: Eastern Christians and Catholic Expansion in the Age of Confessionalism

In recent decades, there has been a resurgence of scholarship on contacts between the Catholic Church and Eastern and Oriental Churches in the pre-modern period. Spanning large swaths of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, these interconfessional encounters were marked by fierce theological debates, cultural misunderstandings, political intrigues, and complex negotiations of religious practices and beliefs. They produced greater familiarity and mutual understanding of confessional traditions in anticipation of the coveted Christian unity, while also resulting in new schisms between and within the Churches. Since studies of these developments are often nested inside their geographically defined fields, this workshop aims to put them in dialogue with each other, exploring differences, connections, and wider patterns across the vast geography of Eastern Christianity.

This workshop explores themes of church unity and confessionalization, conversion and religious syncretism, knowledge production and intellectual exchange. It features papers by scholars working within different disciplinary frameworks, including cultural history, theology, and art history, with the focus on the Armenian and Ruthenian Orthodox Churches in their encounter with early modern Catholicism.

Workshop Program (Eastern Standard Time/EST)

9:45-10:00 AM Welcome & Opening Remarks – Gottfried Hagen (University of Michigan) & Bogdan Pavlish (University of Michigan)

10:00-11:30 AM Keynote Lecture – Cesare Santus (University of Trieste)
Education, Confession, and Devotion: Shaping Armenian Catholicism in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire
Just when the confessional paradigm seemed to have exhausted its heuristic potential in the context for which it was developed (sixteenth-century Western Europe), a new generation of scholars rediscovered its usefulness for analyzing religious polarization in the early modern Ottoman Empire and Eastern Europe Drawing on this historiography, this lecture will focus on a specific case study: the Armenians of Constantinople and Ottoman Anatolia at the turn of the eighteenth century In their case, contact with Catholic missionaries not only created a rift within these communities but also led over time to the construction of two distinct and opposing confessional identities Specifically, this lecture will analyze the cultural and social tools used by both Catholic missionaries and the Armenian Apostolic clergy to build and consolidate a sense of belonging to two faith communities, overcoming previous ambiguities and the efforts of those who did not want to choose between Rome and Etchmiadzin.

Panels:

11:45-1:00 PM Panel I: Confessionalism in Medieval Armenia
Discussant: Helmut Puff, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Sergio La Porta, California State University, Fresno, CA – Tradition!? The Fight for An Armenian Confessional Identity in the Middle Ages

Ani Shahinian, St Nersess/St Vladimir’s Theological Seminary, New York – Christian-Muslim Identities and the Perception of the 'Other': A Case Study of Awag Salmastec‘i's Martyrology (1390)

1:00-2:00 PM Lunch for Workshop Participants

2:00-3:15 PM Panel II: Ruthenians and Armenians at the Confessional Crossroads
Discussant: Valerie Kivelson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Iryna Klymenko, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany – Our Fast, Their Feast: Bodily Practices and Religious Encounters Between Kyiv and Rome Around 1600

Anatole Upart, State University of New York, Binghamton – Armenian and Ruthenian National Churches in Early Modern Rome

3:30-4:45 PM Panel III: Mission and Syncretism in the Armeno-Catholic Encounter
Discussant: Cesare Santus, University of Trieste

Daniel Ohanian, University of California, Los Angeles – Armeno-Catholic Syncretism and a Secret Printing Press in c 1700 Istanbul

Bogdan Pavlish, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor – Crafty Virgins, Credulous Kings: Faith and Deceit in Armenian Catholic Theater in Seventeenth-Century Lviv

This workshop was organized by Dr. Bogdan Pavlish (2024-25 Manoogian Postdoctoral Fellow in Armenian History, University of Michigan) and Dr. Gottfried Hagen (University of Michigan)

Register at https://umich.zoom.us/j/95935123558